Wednesday, April 9, 2008

One new regular weekly feature on Roto Advice will be our Prospect Watch. One of the difficult parts of finding the next Tim Lincecum or Johnny Cueto is keeping track of who's doing well in the minors; all the players at all of the levels can be overwhelming. What we'll be doing is starting with a list of some of the top prospects in baseball (not all of whom are close to the majors, such as Angel Villolona of the Giants) & provide their YTD stats at each level.

I understand that stats aren't the only sign of success, but stats can go a long way towards telling us whether players are continuing to succeed (like Andrew McCutchen's 2 HR thus far on the season) or making progress in areas of weakness (such as Brandon Wood's K rate, which is currently at 12 K's in 26 AB's, with only 1 BB - ouch; no progress there yet).

The list will probably morph into something different as the season progresses, but hopefully this will help some fantasy managers, especially those who have minor league roster spots or those in deep leagues. Other blogs already have some great variations of this feature available, such as Fantasy Gameday's prospect watch or one of Brock for Broglio's daily prospect reports, but this should also be a useful tool to help supplement those items, especially since it will focus on the player's YTD performance.

Some of the prospects who will be featured in our first installment this week include:

Please supply feedback of others you'd like me to track, but keep in mind that this list has to provide the biggest bang for the buck - meaning it can't grow to 300 names by the end of the season. What I'll likely do as well is sort them in some logical manner, such as Baseball America's top 100, ESPN's top prospects, etc. This way, it just won't be a random list of names, but you'll be able to easily see the "top prospects" vs. some of the longer term lower level minor league prospects.